1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the analysis and management of business performance and, more particularly, to a system and method for analyzing and managing business process performance. The invention identifies business process transformation opportunities of current business processes and applies business transformation patterns by referring to stored knowledge. The thus transformed business processes have superior performance in terms of key business performance indicators such as shorter process cycle time, higher process throughput, lower process cost, or combinations of the above.
2. Background Description
Business process modeling and analysis has been recognized as an effective way for assessing business performance. (See, e.g., M. Laguna and J. Marklund, “Business Process Modeling, Simulation and Design”, Prentice Hall, 2004.) A business process is a flow of business tasks, each requiring certain resource demand for the completion of the task. The resource demand is a description of the resources needed for completing a task, which could be a human resource and/or a computer application. When a task requires a human resource, the cost associated with completing the task depends on a number of factors, including the types of human resources assigned to the task and the amount of time required by the task. When a task requires a computer application, the cost associated with completing the task depends on a number of factors, including the type of computer (e.g., mainframes or personal computers) hosting the application and the amount of time the computer spends in processing this task.
After a business process is designed, the performance of the process can be evaluated by analytical methods or computer simulation. Many commercial business process modeling and simulation packages allow users to design business processes and evaluate their performance. Before a simulation can be started, users have to specify a scenario, which includes the rate of source business artifacts entering the process and the information about the number and unit cost of resources of each type. For example, a call-center operator for loan application may cost $10 per hour, a loan underwriting specialist may cost $20 per hour, and a loan approval manager may cost $30 per hour. In addition, for applications running on a mainframe computer, the cost for performing certain types of transactions can be charged based on its usage of physical resources such as 10 milliseconds of central processing unit (CPU) time. At the end of simulation, performance metrics such as resource utilization, process cycle time, and process cost are typically reported.
Current business process modeling and simulation tools have several limitations. One such limitation is that it relies on experienced practitioners to manually construct an improved business process using the current business process modeling and simulation tools. Another limitation is the lack of methods and tools for managing business performance, by updating the models predicting business performance, based on the state of the business. Yet another limitation is the inability to properly capture experiences gained from business transformation projects and reuse them by applying them to new projects. There are additional limitations, as well.